UK BBQ Mag Autumn 2017 - Page 33

to use natural woods, coconuts from slow and low coals to underground cookery, salt slabs and wet clay, Its only when I am at home and lazy do I get out the BBQ, my home barbeque is made out of an old huge gas canister, I also use a converted car wheel rim with a grill on top.

Feel free to tell us a couple of your stories from your cooking.One short one long story here, After all the fancy trends and high end cuisines, I still burn the bloody toast!!! I was stationed in Bahrain at the time and King Hussein from Jordon had just passed away, the crown prince of Bahrain was hosting the new King of Jordon for lunch, we have as always around 15 minutes warning to make a 12 course meal for security reasons I suppose, not as daunting as it sounds when you have seven or more restaurants to manage, more logistics really. I had the pleasure of catering for this auspicious event, and right next to the presidential suit was a satalight kitchen, just for offloading and serving really. Keep in mind I had over 68 different nationalities in my team and all levels of varying English so communication is a nightmare. Having asked one of my stewarding guys (pot wash) to place some gel fuel in my hot trolley while I went off to get some other stuff, coming back 10 minutes later I saw the food was cold and the guy placed only one fuel in, so of course I jumped up and down and gave him a royal bollocking asking him to place more in the trolley, I got called away, coming back and almost ready to serve I opened the hot trolley doors and much to my horror, the trolley was now on fire, my guy had placed 24 gel fuel containers in the bottom (4 would have been fine) I slammed the door closed as the ventilation system was really poor and the fire sprinklers were above the trolley, off comes my chefs jacket, in the sink, soaked with water, and I came back to the trolley to place out the flames. A huge scuffle and noise, in come running countless Arabic special armed forces with automatic weapons pinning me to the floor, I was sat in the corner with a black face and singed hair with all the guys pointing their weapons at me, my chef came in screaming at me in his French English!!!!!!! The whole event didn’t really sink in until after with a few beers did I realize I just nearly soaked both dignitaries but also so close to destroying a multimillion dollar presidential suite, jail time